New picture emerges of fugitive rapist's life in hiding

After he fled in 1979 while awaiting sentencing for three rapes on the South Shore, Gary Allen Irving of Rockland, Mass., married and started a family while living under an assumed name outside Portland, police said Thursday.

After he fled in 1979 while awaiting sentencing for three rapes on the South Shore, Gary Allen Irving of Rockland, Mass., married and started a family while living under an assumed name outside Portland, police said Thursday.

Irving, who worked installing telephones in businesses, was living in Gorham using the name Gregg Irving when he was arrested Wednesday night by Massachusetts and Maine State Police, Gorham police and the FBI.

"He was surprised to find law enforcement on his front door," Maine State Police Sgt. Robert Burke said Thursday. Maine police didn't say what led authorities to Irving.

Irving, 52, was due to appear in court Friday on charges of being fugitive from justice and being a felon in possession of firearms. He was held without bail Thursday at Cumberland County Jail. The jail had no information as to whether he'd hired an attorney.

Irving has been on the Massachusetts Top 10 Most Wanted list for decades. He'd fledwhile awaiting sentencing for three rapes in Norfolk County that carried the potential for life imprisonment, according to Massachusetts State Police.

In June 1979 Irving was convicted of the ambush rapes of three young women from Cohasset, Weymouth and Holbrook. All the attacks were committed in the summer of 1978.

In one of the rapes, he knocked the victim off of her bike, dragged her to a secluded area and raped her repeatedly; in another, he forced the victim into his car and threatened her with a knife, police said.

In Gorham, Irving and his wife had no encounters with police other than 2006 when the wife was a victim of identity theft.

The couple have an adult son and daughter who are in their 20s, as well as a granddaughter, said a neighbor, Leroy Dixon, who knew Irving by his middle name, Al. Irving had lived in the home for decades, Dixon said

"As far as I can see, he lived an ordinary life in a middle-class suburb," Dixon said.

Police said the couple were watching TV and that a 3-year-old girl was inside the home when police arrived to make the arrest Wednesday night.

Nobody answered the door Thursday at their blue clapboard house, which police said was listed in the wife's name. A minivan, sedan and pickup were parked in the dirt driveway front of a detached garage. A swing set and camper were in the backyard.

Now that Maine authorities know Irving's identity, they'll be looking at unsolved rapes to see if he may have been involved, said Steve McCausland, spokesman for the Maine Department of Public Safety.